But one thing you've just got to think is that Ricky Gervais is prolific. Here's his latest film.

It looks like a nice, gentle, coming-of-age, small-town-nostalgic film – particularly if your age of coming was the mid-1970s, and the small town you're nostalgic for is Reading. Well, Reading as seen through the eyes of the kind of chubby and comedic chap who might have been growing up round there, round then.

Cemetery Junction

So, given the obviously autobiographical peg, why is this such a by-the-numbers trailer? Whoever's baiting the hook for Cemetery Junction doesn't appear to think the wit and observational skills of Gervais (and writing/directing partner Merchant) are enough to pull us in. Instead, they've spelled things out for us, as if playing Simon Says.

For every time text pops up on screen explaining the story, an exact visual representation follows hot on its heels. "In Cemetery Junction …(sign saying Cemetery Junction) … some people want success … (lead character in a suit at a job interview) … "

Cemetery Junction

And so it goes on. The only surprise is that they didn't stick a random shot of an open door just after the text to tell us that everyone "wants a way out".

Cemetery Junction

Not Ralph Fiennes, of course. He doesn't want a way out, as arguably the biggest name in the film; he needs a way in – to this trailer, at least. All he has at the moment is a brief clip in which he does little more than grunt, which arguably makes it look like he's only around for a three-second cameo even more than if they'd left him out altogether.

Cemetery Junction

And Ricky Gervais, of course – playing the dad of the lead, or so it seems. We see him smoking, working in a factory, sitting at home chatting to Granny Anne Reid about his two jobs.

It's so completely, totally British. In a good way, and also in a way that means anyone not from urban Berkshire could well be left wondering what on earth it is that Gran compares being a window cleaner to. (Is it "padding"? "Pigging"? Why is window cleaning like pigging? What is pigging? Will she have subtitles? What? She's saying "begging"? Really?)

But it's a mark of just how badly thought through this trailer really is that all that Britishness, all this homegrown flavour, gets trampled underfoot as the booming American voiceover man crashes in with a big, deep, super-resonant "CEMETERRY JUNKSHUUUURN". It sounds so out of step with the clips sewn together it throws you off entirely.

So what are you left with? Well, confusion about whether this really is the rather good, thoroughly British nostalgic coming-of-age buddy comedy it seems, in places, that it might be.

A nagging feeling they might have been better off just re-releasing the teaser trailer.

Cemetery Junction

Which, with its Extras-esque ribbing of Fiennes, and its notable absence of clips from the film, does at least have a certain consistency of tone. And it's funny – and more likely to attract fans of Gervais and Merchant than this more subtle joke-light trailer might.

And the last thing you're left with? The thing about this trailer that will stay with you the longest? Well, it's the annoyingly loud, wordy Mott the Hoople single which threads all the way through, bulldozing half of the dialogue in its wake. You probably haven't even watched the video and it's already stuck in your head. Two-three-four, join with me in the song that will be burrowing into your brain all day: "All the young dudes … Carry the neeewwwwws …"